What Are The Odds
by mattmetzger
Summary: Formerly 'Love and Fate.' Spock's life is abruptly destroyed, and it is immediately apparent that things are never going to be the same. Jim finds himself caught between two terrible outcomes, and about to take the greater of two evils. K/S.
1. Chapter 1

**Notes: This is NOT the sequel to 'The Stargazers.' I also know I probably shouldn't be starting a new story yet, but oh well. This is the beginning of a series of probably five multi-chaptered stories. I will issue the appropriate warnings for each story separately, but the warning now is that there will be severe angst. And you will quite possibly hate Jim by the end of the series.**

**Warnings: strong language, moderate violence, slash.**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Star Trek 2009 and I make no profit from this work.**

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* * *

**

Jim took in a lungful of clear, unhabited-planet air and grinned. Sometimes, this job paid off.

Marelles V was a very small planet on the outskirts of the Marellen system, inching its slow way around a tiny new star and growing absolutely bugger all in terms of fauna, but so much flora that Jim had sneezed the moment they'd materialised on the surface.

Marelles IV, its closest neighbour, was home to (surprise surprise) the Marellen species - a small, squat humanoid species with the ugliest faces Jim had ever seen. And he'd been in an advanced astrophysics course with a Tellarite. Until the _USS Santa Ana _and her crew had managed to get through negotiations and a shaky peace treaty with them, the Marellens had a nasty habit of attacking Federation ships anywhere near them. They weren't technologically advanced enough to really pose a threat, and certainly not to frontline ships like the _Enterprise _and the _Santa Ana_, but they _were _enough to mean a ship couldn't stay in the area for very long.

Which meant Marelles V, while having been known to the Federation for decades, had never seen a single Federation member on its surface.

Frankly, it was a godsend of a mission. Just sit there in orbit and let the sciences do their thing. Jim _liked _this part of space exploration - all the sciences (and a fair number of the engineers, just for kicks) crawling all over a brand new planet, taking readings of things Jim hadn't even known you could take readings _of_, and nothing within a million miles to shoot them with phasers, guns or old-fashioned bows and arrows.

It was like a short shore leave.

Often, crew members suffering from cabin fever were stuck on the away teams as well, to get some air and take some of the more basic readings that even Jim's admittedly dim new yeoman could have done by herself. It improved everyone's mood, and therefore inter-crew relations and morale.

Plus, it was like a day off for Jim.

Their chosen site for the day was a beach, small and closed, with dark red sands and beautifully cool (and brilliantly safe) seawater that lapped at Jim's bare ankles. He'd said 'screw regulations' as regarding uniforms, so half the crew were barefoot, trousers rolled up, and paddling while simultaneously doing their jobs with scary professionalism.

Naturally, Spock wasn't barefoot, and Jim mourned the hidden feet. He liked Spock's feet. Slim and pale and somehow delicate to the touch. Not that he'd ever admit that out loud - it was a weird, girly, poetic thought that he'd very much like to keep to himself.

Still, he couldn't resist asking whether Spock didn't want to paddle.

"Hardly, Captain," came the dry response, and Jim snickered.

"Not even a little bit?"

"Not even."

"Do Vulcans not like water, then?" he asked, slightly more seriously, determinedly following Spock from rock to rock as he took readings of the mineral composition of the cliff face that sheltered the beach from the stronger winds they'd experienced yesterday on the inland hills.

"If, by that, you mean that we do not partake in fruitless water-based activities for entertainment purposes, then I suppose it is a reasonably accurate statement to make," Spock said. He was quite obviously only half-listening to Jim, but that was just fine as far as Jim was concerned. There was something nice - warm and fuzzy, maybe - at seeing him engrossed in his beloved science.

"Shame. You'd look good soaking wet."

Spock gave him a look that said, quite clearly, _don't even think about it_. Jim grinned, not quite innocently, and the look intensified to _I know that you are thinking about it, and believe me, if you do it, I will personally make the rest of your existence very short and very unpleasant_. Jim wasn't fool enough to believe otherwise, and held up his hand in the universal gesture of 'not going to do anything.'

"I stand by my statement," he said defiantly, and - before Spock could stop him - darted in and quickly pressed a chaste kiss to that stern mouth before backing up out of reach and revenge.

"We are on _duty_."

"And nothing is happening, and everybody knows, and it was just one little kiss," Jim said, knowing the argument by heart. They'd not been together long, but Spock was very strict about on- and off-duty activities. Most of the time, Jim agreed. But just this once, it wouldn't hurt. "Relax. I'm hardly going to sneak you off for some sex on the beach, am I?"

Spock's eyebrow told him that that would get him punished too, and probably not in an enjoyable way, so Jim shrugged and backed up a little further out of reach.

"Go on, get back to your science," he said, and grinned _yet again_.

Spock eyed him in...Jim didn't know what...for a moment longer, before nodding and turning back to the rock face with a soft, "As you wish, Jim."

Jim was sure that he was smiling too.

* * *

Jim came with a shout, bliss snapping through every pore of his body in a lightning-fast reaction, and barely caught himself from collapsing onto Spock in a boneless heap. His chest heaved in the warm air of his quarters, and he grinned in bleary exhaustion down at his similarly dazed Vulcan.

"Look at you," he panted, "all messed up like this."

He ran his fingers through Spock's already ruffled hair, before exchanging a couple more lazy, open-mouthed kisses. Spock murmured a Vulcan word into his lips, though Jim didn't catch it, and let out what was undeniably a contented sigh.

"Be right back," Jim whispered, slipping free of Spock's body at last and going to the bathroom for a damp cloth. He cleaned them both off tenderly, pressing absent kisses to Spock's taut abdomen, before tossing the cloth aside and sliding back into the bed, tugging the sheets up. "I need to get a bigger bed."

Spock hummed, going placidly where Jim's hands told him to go, until they were curled like spoons in a drawer, just about fitting into the narrow bunk. Jim's thoughts pressed along their shared contact, and though he didn't take the chance to actually look at them, they buzzed with light, warm energy, brushing his skin and nerves like hot, nervous hands, and Spock allowed himself a very small smile.

Jim couldn't see it, of course, but his thoughts seemed positive enough without it.

"Night, Spock."

"Goodnight, Jim."

Jim pressed a light kiss into the back of Spock's neck, inhaling the scent of his skin, and smiled. He never thought he'd get this lucky. They'd only been dating for three months, but Jesus, Jim knew he was in deep. He couldn't help but smile whenever he saw Spock engrossed in work - which was _always_ - and his dick paid attention every time Spock bent over the science station - which was _always _- and during sex, Jim felt like he'd go off in under thirty seconds if Spock's hair got mussed - which was _freaking always_.

Okay, so he could be a stuck-up, prissy bitch as well, and Jim didn't get the whole vegetarian thing, and Spock had this special way of rolling his eyes that was totally not rolling his eyes that just pissed Jim right off...but God, Jim fancied the pants off this guy.

Quite literally.

It was entirely possible, Jim considered, that Old Geezer Spock hadn't been entirely wrong.

* * *

"I don't want to know," McCoy said the next morning on that planetside beach, when he saw Jim's cat-that-got-the-canary smile. "I don't want to know, or even speculate. Let us ignore the entire ordeal."

"Or not," Jim said.

"We are ignoring it. I have hypos."

"Okay, we're ignoring it," Jim agreed. If there was one thing he couldn't stand, it was McCoy's hypos. And if there was one thing McCoy couldn't stand, it was hearing about Jim's sex life with Spock.

Jim scowled. McCoy was definitely winning in this scenario.

"You should show more support for your best friend's relationship, you know," he pointed out.

"Yeah, but it's not your _relationship _that you want to give me all the details about, now is it?" McCoy pointed out, quite reasonably. "And don't you take your boots off again. You'll get sunburned raw if you go paddling like a four-year-old again."

Jim pouted. "Oh come on."

"No."

He rolled his eyes. McCoy had clearly spent _his _morning telling all the other crewmembers the same thing, as nobody was barefoot today, despite it being just as nice as yesterday.

Well, okay, maybe the scientists weren't barefoot because a good dozen of them were inside a cave, but the _others _could have been.

"What are they looking at?" Jim asked, eyeing the cluster of people in the mouth of the cave dubiously.

"I dunno. Mould. Looks green and diseased. You watch, one of them'll get athlete's foot from prodding it."

"They're not prodding it with their _feet_," Jim pointed out.

"Alien athlete's foot - they might not need to," McCoy said pessimistically, and Jim snickered.

"Admit it, you want someone to get sick just so you've got something to do."

"I'm a doctor, Jim, not a pharmacist. All I've had to do in the last week is dole out the morning-after pill, condoms and hangover hypos."

Jim grinned broadly. "I'll remind you of that next time - what the _hell_?"

His yelp of surprise came as he hit the sand when the earth gave way. No, his dizzy mind realised, not gave away, but _shook_. The beach was shaking like beads in a child's rattle, causing every single crewmember to tumble to the floor. Jim's vision shook as if he was riding a bad rollercoaster, and he clung to the sand and felt faintly sick at all the motion.

"Earthquake?" he heard someone - Lieutenant Epping? - demand loudly, and then a scream.

Jim's head snapped up in time to see the cliff face sag inwards, almost like the rock was giving a despondent sigh, and folding down on itself surprisingly smoothly for a sheer face of shaky rock. Several of the scientists scrambled out of the way with shrieks as the loosest rocks came apart and tumbled heavily into the sand, the smallest the size of Jim's entire body, and easily three times as heavy.

"_Get to the water_!" he roared, and, through the blurred vision, saw his will obeyed as best they could on such unstable ground.

And then - quite suddenly - it was over. The ground slowed and stilled entirely, the tooth-rattling quake over in less than two minutes, and Jim staggered to his feet. He felt like he'd been picked up and shaken, like a terrier shakes a rat, and unceremoniously dropped again.

His stomach dropped out of his body entirely at the sight.

The neatly folded cliff face - so much so that the lines of sedimentary rock formed a new, neat ripple in the cliff face - had swallowed the small cave. It was completely gone, without a trace of where it had been before. _Gone_.

"_Report_!" he roared. "Are we missing people? _Was anyone in there_?"

He had his communicator out before he received the number, because he already knew.

Spock wasn't out here - so he had to be in _there_.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes: I am quite obviously bullshitting how a tractor beam works. And a transporter, for that matter. Let us pretend.**

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* * *

**

Jim put his head in his hands and held onto his composure as best he could. It just wouldn't do to lose it on the bridge. Not right now.

"I'm sorry, Cap'n, but I cannae do anything about it," Scotty said, apology weaving itself into every word, and Jim nodded, feeling like he was going to choke.

They weren't a mining vessel. They didn't have the equipment to move that much rock in a high-gravity atmosphere. They weren't a rescue ship; same problem. They were an exploration vessel; they were equipped with the supplies to shift a light landslide, maybe a small cave-in. Not something like this.

Jim had known that from the moment he'd taken in the bent cliff face. What he hadn't known - what nobody had known, until Scotty had tried the obvious - was that the mineral composition of the rocks was messing with the transporters.

They couldn't get them out.

"It's the strangest thing," Scotty said. "I can _find_ them with the transporter; it can read them clearly enough to tell me _exactly _which o' the crew I've got, none o' the usual guessing game, and it can even get a lock. It just cannae _transport _them."

Chekov broke away from the group and returned to his console, muttering to himself in Russian. Jim let him go.

"Okay," he breathed, slow and deliberate. "What other options are there?"

It was like having hold of a drowning victim's hand, and not being strong enough to pull them out of the water.

"Shift what we can, and send a distress call," Sulu said promptly. "The _USS Io _is forty hours away at warp six; she's a mining vessel currently doing a dilithium haul on Marelles II, but she'll be able to get out here."

"Yeah, but will they get here in _time_?" Jim demanded.

McCoy shrugged when he glanced his way. "I haven't a clue, Jim. The transporters can pick up all six bodies, and it's telling us that only two of them are actually dead, but you know how it works. No details whatsoever. The other four could be just fine, or at death's door. And there's no telling if they have any air."

Jim swallowed. "Which...who have we lost?"

Scotty looked down at his boots. "Lieutenant Yates and Ensign Finlinson, sir."

"Right."

Jim hated himself for the crash of relief that Spock, apparently, was still alive. It felt like an insult to the two dead crewmembers, but he couldn't help it. He _was _relieved, and judging by the sudden squeeze that McCoy gave his shoulder, everyone could tell.

"I've got the entire department working on the transporters, trying to get them to function around the mineral makeup, but..." Scotty trailed off, and Jim nodded. Transporters were famous at failing when it came to certain compounds, and nobody had gotten around the problem yet. It was doubtful that they could, ship full of geniuses or not.

"Send a distress call to the _Io_," Jim ordered suddenly, and Uhura swung back to her post grimly. "Tell them it's a medical emergency and there are six lives at risk. Who's the Captain?"

"Captain Adam Johansson, sir," Uhura replied instantly, then paused. "And First Officer Xi Yang."

"Thought so," Jim nodded. "Include a list of the endangered crew. That'll get them moving."

Xi Yang, both Jim and Uhura knew, had been another phonology instructor at the Academy with Spock. Both of them had been reassigned to active duty after the _Narada_, and she was famous (or infamous) for being one of the only staff members to have earned Spock's genuine respect. If Spock applied the label 'friend' to anyone, Xi Yang had to be one, and neither Jim nor Uhura doubted that she would turn the _Io _around to provide assistance for him.

Jim swallowed. He only hoped that she could persuade Johansson to move it fast enough. Warp six wasn't a comfortable speed for a mining vessel.

"What else can we do?" he asked, fearing the answer.

"The science department has been down there drilling holes into the rock face, trying to give them air," Sulu said. "They're requesting a shuttle to say overnight."

"No," Jim said immediately. "The planet's unexplored and unknown. They can beam in and out from dawn until dusk, but I'm not losing more people because they want to provide moral support for people who don't know they're there."

He felt like a bastard saying it, but McCoy and Scotty were nodding along with him, and Sulu didn't look mutinous. It was the right decision, even if it felt wrong to make.

"Now what?" he heard Uhura ask, quietly and not at all like the self-assured woman usually sitting at the communications console and glowering at the back of his head.

Jim scrubbed his hands through his hair.

"Now...now we wait."

* * *

Jim was woken from an uneasy doze by his communicator, at 0630 hours. He'd barely gotten to sleep, his bed feeling unusually large and cold despite the fact that Spock only slept there two nights in the week, and now rubbed the sleep from his eyes as he answered it.

"Yeah?"

"Sulu here, sir. Come up to the bridge. We think Chekov's got something."

Jim scrambled from the bed, yanking on his black t-shirt, trousers and boots, not bothering with the command gold, before sprinting from his quarters. In less than a minute he was on the bridge, and was inexplicably happy to find everyone else looking as tired and sleep-muddled as he must.

"Sir," Chekov launched right into it. "The transporter can identify the missing crew; I believe we can use those coordinates to manipulate the tractor beam into extracting them for us."

Jim blinked. "What? But the tractor beam can only lock onto other ships."

"_Da_, but I can - I believe I can manually program the necessary dimensions into the system instead of using our usual sensor readings. If I use the coordinates from the transporter, and input dimensions that would extract those coordinates and surrounding rock, then we could move the entire volume further out onto the beach and then rescue them."

Jim took a moment to process it, then turned his stunned face to Scotty.

"I think it could work, sir."

"Then do it," Jim croaked. "Do it!"

* * *

At 0655 ship time - which was, disconcertingly, high noon on the little beach - half the medical staff beamed down ready to deal with the severe injuries that had have been sustained. The transporter was still insisting that four of their six trapped personnel were alive, and Jim was praying that it was right.

Praying that _Spock _was still alive.

The ship had been brought even lower in orbit to let Sulu and Chekov maximise the strength of the tractor beam - instead of being a near-invisible smudge in the sky, the _Enterprise _was now clear, if miniscule, from the shore.

"Ready with that transporter, Mr. Scott?" Jim demanded, determined not to let his voice shake.

"Aye, sir. Ready when you are."

"Alright. Mr. Chekov? Lock on."

There was a short pause, then the deep red beam flooded over the rock. Another pause, then a deafening cracking as a mound of loose rock, straining against the confines of the beam, was dragged forward. Jim swore he could feel the beach shuddering under the friction and the weight, and the cliff shrieked and collapsed into the gaping hole left behind. The tractor beam extracted a mound of rubble, the rough size and shape of an oil truck, halfway down the beach, before deactivating.

The rock collapsed outwards into a widespread pile, and stilled.

And people moved.

In a surprisingly efficient swarm, the science personnel were digging into the heavy rock, shifting it off now-visible crewmembers. The moment a man was clear, a medic was there with a tricorder and hyposprays and loud, rude commands to anyone that would listen. Jim heard three - not two, but three - announcements of death, and the whir of the transporter as three bodies were extracted.

He swallowed, hard, and barked an order. "Everyone who doesn't need to be here, back on the ship! Decisions will be made about further planetary trips tomorrow. Until then, shipside! _Now_!"

In small clusters, the remaining scientists vanished, and he found himself stumbling towards the three remaining clusters of medics. One disappeared as he approached, and he hoped that their patient had stabilised rather than died, and he found himself looking down on the prone, still bodies of Lieutenant Commander Alexandra Zabitzi - who ran the botany labs - and (his knees shook dangerously for a second) Spock.

"Alive?" he whispered, as Zabitzi's group disappeared in the swirl of transporter light.

One of the nurses looked up from Spock, and her expression softened.

"Still with us, Captain," she said, and he heaved a deep sigh of relief.

"That's it!" McCoy's voice rose above the others. "Stable as we're gonna get him. Scotty, I need a site-to-site transport of five to Sickbay, _now_!"

And then they were gone - and Jim wasn't imagining the green stain in the sand.

He swallowed against a suddenly dry throat, and glanced about the now-empty beach. Jesus. Even uninhabited planets could be death traps.

"Kirk to _Enterprise_. One to beam up."


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes:**

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* * *

**

Dr. McCoy sank into his office chair and sighed the mother of all sighs. The deepest sigh physically possible. _Exorcist _sighed.

Jesus, but he hated his job tonight.

He had just spent nine hours in surgery, up to his elbows in bright green blood, desperately trying to keep his patient - damn it, yes, his _friend _- from dying. He hadn't _entirely _succeeded - he'd hauled Spock out of four cardiac arrests on the table, and that wasn't even his biggest concern right now.

He didn't reach for the bourbon yet. He wasn't certain enough that Spock wouldn't crash and have to be pulled out of another one.

"Jesus, what did I sign up for?" he breathed to the empty room.

He was the only physician on board trained in Vulcan medicine well enough to perform the necessary surgery. Hell, he probably _wasn't _qualified to do the necessary surgery, but it had been just that: necessary. Without it, he knew damn well that the First Officer would be dead, and Jim would be shattered.

Fuck it, Jim was going to be shattered anyway. There just...wasn't any coming back from this. Not really.

A tap on his door made him jerk up, but Nurse Chapel shook her head when she peeked it around the doorframe.

"Just to let you know," she whispered gently, "Spock's gone into the healing trance."

He sighed again - this time with relief - and nodded. "Thank you, Chapel. Would you contact the Captain and ask him to come to my office?"

She nodded sympathetically, and left him alone to his thoughts for a little longer.

Christ, just _what _was he going to tell Jim? _It's over, Jim. It's over. This little Eden you had going with your First Officer, that complete love that we all saw you heading for? Well, it's going to be different now. It's going to be different and you'd better hope it's honest-to-God, world-ending true love that you and he have got going for you, because otherwise there is just no way you'll make it_.

God, he _couldn't_.

He couldn't do it. He'd watched Jim falling in love for the last six months. Bones even knew when Jim had first _noticed _his Vulcan officer - at the two-years-without-dying-on-this-stupid-mission party last February, and Spock had been in 'casual' clothes for the first time - at least, the first time that Jim would have seen. Jim had taken one look at that ass, and Bones had known.

But it hadn't been just lust. Bones had watched as Jim moved from lust to attraction to _love_. Watched his look turn from calculating and shrewd to soft and - urgh - completely sappy whenever he caught sight of Spock. Jim had been bending McCoy's ear for weeks about asking Spock out before he ever got up the nerve to do it, and McCoy even knew when they'd first done the nasty, from the ear-splitting grin Jim had worn for the next four days.

And now...now...

Now, it was over. McCoy knew relationships, and just how much change they could handle. A baby was right up there on the list of 'possible upheavals to our perfect lives', even when you had been planning for one ever since the wedding night. And he and Jocelyn had been in love, impossibly in love, but they hadn't been able to weather all the changes that a baby brought with it.

This? This was so much worse. There was no planning for this - and McCoy was terrified, for Jim's sake, that there was no weathering this either. They'd not been together long, not nearly long enough to handle this, and McCoy could send the end in sight. And this was all assuming that Spock's healing voodoo worked and he didn't up and die from the shock and damage of his injuries in the night. Which was entirely possible - all too possible.

McCoy reached for the bourbon.

He hadn't wanted to operate. He'd fought to keep his hands steady. As much as the Vulcan wound him up, and for all their sniping and bickering and occasional downright nastiness to each other, he liked Spock. He genuinely respected the man - Vulcans had balls, if nothing else, and McCoy was man enough to respect a guy with brass balls the size of Spock's. Hell, he put up with Jim on a much more regular basis than everyone else on board, and that alone took serious guts.

He hadn't wanted to operate on a friend; hadn't wanted to feel that man die under his hands. But he had - repeatedly - and now his hands were shaking again.

He'd been a wreck. More or less, a cliff had fallen on top of him, and he was quite understandably a wreck. He had more broken bones than intact ones, and he had lost so much blood that they'd used all the transfusion stocks. McCoy would have preferred another half-pint, but it wasn't possible now. When they'd got him out, the rocks had scraped him raw, and half of his internal organs had been exposed to the sandy air.

McCoy had never wanted to throw up so much since his very first autopsy class in Mississippi.

In terms of recovery, he even had to split it into long-term and short-term. In the short term, he was terrified of what that head injury (cracked the skull like an egg, lucky his brain fluid hadn't leaked out) had done to the Vulcan. In the long term...Jesus, McCoy didn't even want to _think _about the long term.

Someone knocked on his door. Probably Jim.

"Enter," he croaked.

Jesus, just what the _hell _was he going to tell him?

* * *

Jim lingered in Sickbay long enough to note that Spock was still alive, and McCoy was his attending physician, before hauling ass and trying to sort out the mess.

The first issue was to hail the _Io _and retract their distress signal. Johansson would most likely not be pleased, but he could, quite frankly, go fuck himself. And undoubtedly, Yang would have sent Jim a message by the next shift demanding more information.

The second was to run off an emergency report to Starfleet, sketching out their crisis and promising more information. Jim knew that the moment Pike saw Spock's name on the injured personnel list, he would be calling, and Jim had to steel himself for that. Spock had been Pike's First Officer too, and Jim knew that if anyone in the world right now was as fond of Spock as he was, it was Pike.

It probably wasn't going to be a pleasant conversation.

While he waited for the inevitable, Jim added a glowing commendation to Chekov's personnel file for his quick thinking, drafted the usual letters to the dead crewmembers' families (but didn't finish and send them until he had a complete death toll (_Jesus_) from Sickbay) and sent a message to Lieutenant Ro in Communications asking her to arrange memorial services.

Three dead, three in surgery fighting for their lives. _And please, God, don't let that rise to four._

He was halfway through the preliminary report to Starfleet when Uhura commed him.

"Admiral Pike for you, sir."

"Patch it through to my quarters," Jim said tiredly.

"Aye, sir."

A moment later, Pike's face appeared on his screen, frowning, and Jim mustered up a weary smile.

"Forgive my sloppy salute, sir."

"Fair enough," Pike said. "What the hell happened, Jim?"

_Jim_. A social call - or near enough - then.

"Off the record, sir?"

"Off the record."

"After all the Klingons, and the Romulans, and all the hostile planets that like slinging poisoned stuff at us...I wasn't expecting an accident."

"An accident?"

"Yeah," Jim swallowed. "There was an earthquake, and the cave that some of the geology geeks were investigating was crushed. An accident. Absolutely no one to blame, and nobody could have seen it coming."

Pike's expression softened slightly. "And that's harder, in a way, isn't it?"

Jim swallowed again, the lump in his throat refusing to move. "Yeah. Yeah, it is, sir."

"How's Spock?"

Jim shrugged. "I don't know. He's in surgery; has been since we got them out. I haven't heard a thing from Dr. McCoy as yet."

Pike nodded. "How many casualties?"

"Three so far. Out of six."

"The _Io _sent a report saying they were answering your distress signal. Did they...?"

"No, sir. Our kid genius Chekov did it again. Used the tractor beam to drag the cave innards out, then we manually extracted them from there. The transporters wouldn't work through the rock," Jim shook his head. "Sir, without him, we would probably have lost all six of my crew down there. I've added a commendation, but I'd like you to add a supporting commendation. He deserves it."

"I'll have a look over your final report, but it certainly sounds like he does," Pike agreed. His expression softened further. "How are _you _holding up, Jim?"

Jim shrugged. "I'll be better once I _know _something."

"Jim..."

"I have to go, sir. A lot of paperwork crops up when this sort of things happen. I'm sure you remember the hell of paperwork."

He signed off before Pike could really respond, and sat staring blankly at the empty screen for several minutes. It still hadn't hit yet. He supposed that was because he'd not really gotten a look at Spock, down on the surface, but it still hadn't hit. He kept expecting the call from Sickbay and for McCoy to be bitching about Vulcan mysticism and computers, and for Spock to be fine and looking impassive as always.

Jim was no idiot - after being caught in a cave in, there was no way Spock was going to be back on the bridge tomorrow, or even out of Sickbay tomorrow, but...

That didn't quite stop him from expecting it.

"Sickbay to Captain Kirk."

"Kirk here."

"Chapel here, sir. Dr. McCoy would like to see you in his office right away."

"On my way."

He swallowed, steeled himself, and walked as slowly as humanly possible towards what he was sure wasn't going to be an easy discussion.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes: I've finally stopped dragging it out. And you're not going to be happy about it.**

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* * *

**

Christine Chapel had become a nurse because she wanted to actually care for her patients.

Her father had been a doctor, and while she'd worshipped his ability to save people's lives, and bring them back from terrible brinks with the power of his hands, he hadn't cared for them the way that nurses did. Nurses were the ones with the wet clothes for fevers, the ones to perform bed baths and mealtimes, to listen to the patients in their illnesses and pains, to chase away the nightmares.

Doctors saved, and nurses cared.

Chapel could probably have gone to medical school if she'd really wanted to, but she hadn't. She'd wanted to care, and so she'd become a nurse. It wasn't until her brother had gone into the service that she'd ever considered nursing in Starfleet.

Now - right now - she couldn't regret it. Oh, there was probably nothing she could do, but she couldn't wish away even the chance to help now, when things were so bad.

The ICU was not one ward, but several small rooms, and she cranked up the thermostat in Spock's room resolutely, complaints of the medical staff later when they came to do _more _tests be damned. The patient's comfort came first, in Chapel's eyes, and never so much as now. Comfort was, after all, going to be elusive for a long time for the Commander.

She'd never met him before, and now she wanted to cry at the change. She'd _seen _him - the only Vulcan on the ship, and such a high rank, made him impossible to miss (along with those devestatingly alluring dark eyes, but she wasn't going to admit that out loud) but she had never really met him.

He'd always seemed so...so aloof. She couldn't imagine how Dr. McCoy said the things he did whenever Spock came in for his routine physicals - Chapel would have died of fright or embarrassment first. And the Captain was certainly overly friendly with him, always touching him and laughing at him, showing him up in front of the crew...sometimes, Chapel wanted to hit him, but she'd never dared speak up.

Always at the back of her mind had been the defensive _he's Vulcan. He doesn't need you to speak up for him. _She had crushed her instincts, kept away, and never dared to even try getting to know the formidable Commander even as her friends in the science departments raved about him.

Now...now she regretted it.

He certainly didn't look formidable any more - and probably never would again.

She sighed, tucked the thermal blankets a little tighter around his shoulders, and headed for the door - just in time to direct Captain Kirk into Dr. McCoy's office.

She decided to stay on duty a little longer, just in case the Captain didn't react too well.

* * *

There was nobody in the main part of Sickbay when Jim arrived, but the lights on the door to the ICU were on, telling him exactly where the three most injured people on his ship were. As he hovered, Chapel came out, and stopped dead at the sight of him.

"Captain!" she exclaimed, then her face softened. "Dr. McCoy's waiting in his office for you."

Jim nodded, but asked, "How's Spock?" anyway.

"Still with us," she repeated. That was how bad it was, Jim thought, that _still with us _had become a comfort.

He didn't say anything, turning from her and heading for McCoy's office, rapping lightly on the door before pressing for entry. The doors slid apart just as McCoy was rising from his chair, and he sat down again when Jim entered.

"Take a seat," McCoy croaked.

He looked like _hell_. White-faced, hands shaking as they uncapped the bottle of bourbon and poured out two generous glasses, eyes dark, bright and bloodshot in their bruised sockets. He looked like he hadn't slept with a week and _then _had had a fight with a Romulan. Honestly, Jim hadn't seen him this bad since the first anniversary of his divorce - and that had been _nasty_.

"Jim, I'm going to be blunt: I can't do this. I can't drop this all like I'm not affected this time around, because Jesus, I just spent nine _hours _operating on that Vulcan of yours and I'm still not sure whether I've got him or not," McCoy said flatly, knocking back half of his glass before finally looking Jim in the eye. "So we're going to start with the others, and then, if I can't carry on, you know what you need to as Captain."

Jim nodded, throat dry with fear. How _bad was it_?

"Ensign Finlinson, Lieutenant Yates, and Lieutenant Myers are dead," McCoy said flatly. "Yates and Finlinson broke their necks. I don't think they lasted long enough to know there'd been a quake. They won't have suffered, and there was nothing to be done for them. Lieutenant Myers suffered serious skull fractures and a compound break to his left femur. Ironically, the least injured of the whole party, but he severed the femoral artery and bled to death. I don't know how long he was alive in there, but it wasn't long. The transporter probably registered him as alive minutes before he died."

Jim nodded, gnawing on his lip. Despite his _need _to hear about Spock, the part of him that knew his duty was mentally cataloguing it all for the reports.

"Zabitzi is going to be alright," McCoy continued, staring at the desk between them. "She'll be in traction for six or seven _weeks_ with spinal injuries, but she's regained consciousness several times, is lucid, and has been responding to nerve stimuli just fine. It'll take a while, but she'll be alright."

Jim felt one of the iron bands around his chest loosen. If even one one crewmember came out of a disaster alive and well, then it couldn't be called a catastrophe.

"And Ensign Freeman?" he asked.

"Not sure," McCoy said. "He's not regained consciousness. Minor skull fracture, several broken ribs, and had to have lung surgery. Dr. Grey's been looking after him; says he's got similar spinal fractures to Zabitzi but until he regains consciousness, we can't fully assess them. He might be fine, he might spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair. We don't know yet."

"But he's not going to die?"

"Unless the head injury stuffs him a coma, I don't think so, no."

"And...and Spock?"

McCoy hesitated, then knocked back the rest of his glass.

"...Bones?"

"As _Captain_," McCoy stressed, voice rasping gruffly, "you need to appoint a new First Officer, and a new Science Officer. You need to get us to one of the Starbases with Vulcan physicians, and _soon_, because I have no idea how the Vulcan body is going to react to this."

Jim's hands were shaking now, too. "To...to what? What's 'this'?"

He almost didn't want to know. Scratch that, he _didn't _want to know. He wanted to run away and hide and pretend none of this was happening, that nothing _had _happened - that it was a bad dream and he would wake up screaming any moment now, and Spock would be there to console him and worry in that weird repressed Vulcan way, andandand...

"What's 'this'?" he repeated, voice shaking.

He didn't _want _to know, but he had to.

McCoy swallowed. "Jim...the only reason he is alive at all is because he's Vulcan. If he were human, he would have been crushed to death, and probably instantaneously. I'm guessing he ducked before the roof hit him, or he would have died the same way as Yates and Finlinson."

Jim shuddered.

"That Vulcan bone density and muscle strength kept enough of the weight off his lungs and heart to let him breathe. Just about. Kept his vital organs safe, anyway, so we got him out in time. But...but the damage, Jim. The _price _for that..."

"You spent nine hours operating," Jim whispered. "What did it take nine hours to do?"

It was the right question. McCoy could do that, and he raised his hands to tick off the list on his fingers. "Bone regenerator on the skull fractures; setting multiple compound fractures in his right arm; bone regenerator on those; surgery to repair grazes to both lungs; setting and healing almost every one of his ribs; regenerator to two spinal fractures, but they weren't serious and should heal just fine; removal of a perforated kidney; extraction of a rock he got impaled between two of his lower ribs; more or less putting his left hip back together entirely..."

Jim knocked back his _own _glass of bourbon, hands trembling. He wanted to be sick.

"...putting both shoulders back in from their dislocations..."

Oh, sweet Jesus.

"...repairing the dislocation and breakages to his _right _hip; multiple cuts and bruises; giving him ten pints of blood in total during the surgery just to stop him from bleeding to death on the table; getting him through four cardiac arrests..."

"How," Jim interrupted, "is he still breathing?"

"Because Vulcans are the most stubborn creatures in the known universe," McCoy swallowed, a ghost of humour showing through. "I've seen cockroaches killed by less."

Jim chuckled, but it sounded hysterical, even to his own ears.

"But he's alive, so..."

"Jim," McCoy interrupted, face stony serious. "That was the lesser part of nine hours. Most of it...I spent..."

He suddenly poured another shot and knocked it back, before forcing the words out in a horrified rush.

"I spent most of those nine hours performing the amputations."

Without further ado, Jim stood up, bent over, and threw up into the trash can by the desk.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes: I'm going away for the weekend, so (due to the lovely responses) I'm sticking this chapter up more or less right away rather than leave it until Monday night. Enjoy?**

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_Amputations._

Jim could faintly feel the warmth of McCoy's hand through his shirt, rubbing circles on his back soothingly. It quelled the nausea, but not the sickening, gut-wrenching _fist _that had grabbed hold of everything between his hips and his collarbone and _squeezed_. The world was grey and shivering around him, threatening to fail at any second, because...because...

"What...what did...?" he choked out.

The doctor sighed heavily, guiding Jim to sit back in his chair and fetching him a glass of water from the replicator.

"Both legs," he said flatly. "They were crushed, Jim. Literally crushed. The only reason he didn't bleed to death down there was that the rock acted like a plug and kept the wounds closed. As it is, he nearly bled out in my surgical unit anyway."

"H-how much?"

"What?"

"How...how much of...of his legs..."

"Most of them," McCoy said heavily. "Even with modern medicine, Jim, I couldn't have saved them. There wasn't an inch of intact bone left. I...amputated five inches above each knee."

Jim sipped at the water, eyes fixed on the table. All the colour had left his features, his eyes huge and glassy in his face now, and he looked as though he were desperately trying not to be sick again.

"I...might have to..." McCoy hesitated, then ploughed on. "I might have to amputate his left forearm and hand as well. The hand's been crushed, almost as badly as the legs. If the bone regenerator can't piece it back together - and I don't think it can - then infection will set in and it'll have to go."

"His _hand_?" Jim choked. "You can't! Bones, you can't! It'll...it'll be like losing an eye for him!"

"If infection sets in, it goes," McCoy insisted. "It's that, or let it spread and kill him, and I have spent too many damn hours in that unit saving his life to set gangrene kill him!"

"You could stop it. You could..."

"Maybe once, Jim. Maybe even twice. But it'll be like a tumour - you can stop the spread, but until you get rid of the source, you're back to square one," McCoy scrubbed a hand over his face and through his hair. "I wish I didn't have to, but that hand is useless now. If I _can _leave it alone, I will, but right now, I don't think it's possible."

Jim took a deep, shuddering breath, his ribcage shivering under the stress of keeping the panic and the remorse at bay long enough to get through this.

"Is he...does he know yet?" Jim breathed.

"No," McCoy said. "He's got into a healing trance. After that, I'm keeping him in a drug-induced coma until his spine and ribs have healed somewhat. Somewhere around two weeks."

Jim took another one of those deep breaths, Sickbay air mocking the depths of his lungs. _There's nothing you can do for him_, it spat, and he hated it.

"Jim? You alright?"

His temper flared, and the colour rushed back into his face. "Am _I_ alright? I'm not the one who's lost his legs! I'm not the one who nearly died! Fucking _hell_, Bones, I wasn't even _rattled _by that fucking quake and you're asking me if I'm alright?"

"Yes," McCoy said calmly, "because you _are _affected. Your partner is in my ICU, with a grim prognosis even if we assume he doesn't die in the next forty-eight hours. That would affect anyone, Jim."

That did it.

Jim hid his face in his hands, and burst into tears.

He hadn't cried since he was a small child, not really. The nearest he'd come was breaking his leg in first year at the Academy - tears of pain, yes, but crying? Not really. But this...this was too much. The words were swimming in his head - _amputations, grim prognosis, infection, coma, cardiac arrest _- and biting at his defences.

And those words - _your partner _- from Bones, of all people. Bones, who grumbled and groaned about Spock on an hourly basis, who always looked so sceptical when Jim waxed lyrical about how _awesome _Spock was, Bones who mercilessly teased both of them about their relationship and the fact that it _wasn't _a quick fuck like Jim was reknowned for..._Bones _saying that...

It was too much.

It rose up - the knowledge that his world had just been torn up and scattered into an icy wind - and overwhelmed him in the form of hot tears and a burning throat, his lungs rattling as they breathed around the golf ball in his windpipe, and the sudden arrival of a warm, familiar embrace. He cried, openly and unashamedly - into McCoy's shoulder, shaking in his arms like a palsy patient, and letting the rough drawl of the Southern USA rub over his wounded psyche and attempt to soothe.

It could not soothe, not yet, not when his partner was still in such danger, and the new development so new as to be crippling - bad word, bad term - but it was an attempt that Jim clung to. He _needed _this, and, for once, was not ashamed to take it.

* * *

The rumour mill started up in earnest the next day.

It began with Sulu, after Jim had haltingly explained that for the time being, Sulu was promoted to Acting First Officer, and they would see about making it permanent when they knew what exactly was going to happen. It was such a cryptic clue, Sulu tried to hash it out with Chekov and Uhura as to what could be happening, and bang.

The first rumour, arising from this, was that Spock had actually died and nobody was telling them yet. After all, the crew agreed, who would want to tell Ambassador Sarek that, not three years after his wife had died, his son had also been killed? Not to mention that if (as the rumour mill _also _insisted) Spock was indeed descended from the formidable T'Pau, there was probably going to be one hell of a diplomatic incident.

All anyone _knew _was that the Vulcan was still in the ICU and could receive no visitors whatsoever, unlike the other two survivors. The medical staff to a man refused to give out any information about him, and so the rumour that he was dead persisted for rather longer than was necessary.

When Jim also promoted Lieutenant Commander Inglis to Science Officer, the rumour mill went wild. Now, they decided, Spock was either dead or resigning from Starfleet altogether. A wounded First Officer could not do his job, but what injury could prevent him performing the Science Officer's duties? No: dead or resigning, it was firmly decided.

When the crew (mostly maintenance and Jim's yeoman) began to notice the Captain's avoidance of Sickbay, and McCoy's avoidance of the _Captain_, a new conclusion was drawn. Yeoman Petrovich insisted that Spock hadn't died, but whatever _had _happened was bad enough for Jim to terminate their relationship. And McCoy wasn't happy about Jim upsetting the patient further, and so the two rarely came into contact any more.

Jim was well aware of the rumours, but made no attempt to stop them. He couldn't muster up the energy to deal with it - hell, he could barely muster up the energy to do the things he was supposed to do about the situation. He had promoted Sulu and Inglis to cover Spock's duties, but hadn't managed to drum up the energy to send any messages to New Vulcan, or even update Pike on the situation.

That _word _just cropped up whenever he tried. _Amputations_.

Jim knew what this meant for Spock, but he tried not to think about it yet. They could cross that bridge when they came to it - after he woke up, after Bones determined whether there was any other damage that they hadn't picked up on. (The doctor _meant _brain damage, but Jim could barely think about it without feeling nauseous again. There just _couldn't _be more.)

Occasionally, there had been direct questions. Uhura and Chekov had both asked Jim directly what had happened, and whether Spock was going to be alright, and he'd blown them both off. After that, none of the rest of the bridge crew seemed to dare, and everybody else was reading into that what they wanted to.

Mostly, that either Spock had died, or Jim didn't want him any more.

The latter one made Jim want to hit something. Or someone. Mostly because...he was terrified that it would turn out to be true. He loved Spock, he really did, and he wanted to be with him forever, but...

Oh, God, there was a but.

But why, then, did he find it so difficult to go and see him? He _hadn't _seen him, that was the point. He'd not been able to bring himself to walk into that little ICU room, to see for himself the damage that McCoy had talked about. He hadn't been able to do it. His brain kept imagining it in horrific glory, imagining bloodied stumps and torn skin where those endless legs used to be.

It wouldn't be like that, he was sure...but not sure enough to go and check. Jim felt immobilised - stuck hating himself for not moving, when it would be so _easy_...and still not moving, not moving, not moving...

* * *

Four days after the extensive surgery, Spock came out of the healing trance. McCoy slapped him the rest of the way to bleary consciousness, and promptly hypoed him back into a coma before Spock could so much as _notice _his condition, never mind ask questions and begin to react. Finally, he could be hooked up to the IVs and pumped full of antibiotics, nutritional supplements, and drugs to keep him under.

Finally, McCoy could stop hovering at the biobed, waiting for his vitals to plummet again.

And finally, McCoy got a full night's sleep.

He had reports to write - specifically, an extensive medical report to add to Spock's permanent file so that the higher-ups and Jim could hash it out over what exactly was going to happen. And McCoy had no illusions about how ugly that was going to be. He had to sign off on the reports that had already been written for the other two patients, as well as autopsy reports to write and send off on the dead.

But first, he slept. Twelve hours, deep and undisturbed, and ate a full meal the next morning before arriving, slightly late, for his shift.

McCoy began to feel slightly more human, and was able to summon up a professional veneer when Jim finally put in his usual appearance. The Captain would hover in the doorway of McCoy's office, enquire about Spock, and disappear again without once asking to see him. This time, McCoy pinned him to the table about it - metaphorically speaking.

"There's...there's no point yet, is there?" Jim said, voice barely staying steady. "He won't know I'm there."

"I have no idea whether he would or he wouldn't," McCoy said. "More to the point, Jim, _you'd _know. You need to see him."

"I _can't_," Jim's voice broke then, and he sounded dangerously close to more tears. "I _can't_, Bones, not yet. Please, not yet."

"Jim, you can't keep putting this off."

"He won't know yet!"

"And what about when he does wake up, and you're not there? When you then refuse to come and see him, because you're scared? What do I do for him then?"

"I'd come then!" Jim protested hotly.

"And let him see your shock? Because it _will _be a shock, Jim. You'll react like I did, like all my nurses did. You'll be horrified, and it'll show, and good God, Jim, you don't need a psychology degree to know that he'll take that the wrong way! If you don't prepare yourself for this, you're going to give him the worst impression of what you think. He can't - _I_ can't - be dealing with any more emotional fallout than there's already going to be!"

Jim wrapped his arms around himself, looking like a small, lost and very frightened child.

"I _can't_," he breathed. "Not _yet_."

He left abruptly, and didn't return for several days. For a while, McCoy tried to break through to him, but he eventually gave up due to higher priorities.

Namely: on the eighth day, it emerged that the antibiotics weren't working.

On the ninth, McCoy operated once more, to severe Spock's arm just below the elbow, and remove a damaged and infected arm from its owner.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes: I don't have further chapters written out yet so there might not be a super-fast update, but as my momentum hasn't died either, it shouldn't be too long. Plus, the responses from you guys are too epic to ignore. Cheers!**

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"But sir..."

"No buts, Kirk," Pike said firmly. "This is too big for another favour. You're heading for New Vulcan to hand over your First Officer - _ex _First Officer, may I remind you - into their care, and that's that."

Jim ran a hand through his hair in exasperation. "Sir, it won't make any difference while we're out here. The doctors agree with me - there's nothing the Vulcans could do for him..."

"Not one of your medical staff trained on Vulcan _or _New Vulcan. There is no way they are in any position to make that claim."

"But Admiral..."

"Jim, I'm sorry, but think about this _logically _for a moment. The best care he can have is in the hands of his own people..."

Jim wanted to protest, childishly, that other Vulcans thought about as much of Spock as Bones thought about Vulcans, but knew that it wasn't going to help his argument. For once, he kept his mouth shut.

"...and, Jim? I received Dr. McCoy's medical report this afternoon."

Jim swallowed.

"Unless the Vulcans have one up on us in the medicine department when it comes to prosthetics, there's no way he's getting back onto a constitution-class starship," Pike's voice softened, quite deliberately, to deliver news that both of them already knew. "You _know _that, Jim. And I know that's why you're really stalling here."

"You're not...offloading him so fast, we're not giving him a _chance _to recover, to..."

"Recover? Are you saying Dr. McCoy has lied to me? Because I know enough about Vulcans to know that they can't regrow entire limbs any more than we can."

"I..."

"Kirk, you're to turn your ship around and get to New Vulcan as soon as possible. I'll issue new orders then depending on how the situation unfolds. I've sent orders to McCoy to get in touch with some of the Vulcan healers and find out what the prognosis is in terms of artificial limbs - but you know as well as I do that Spock's going to be grounded for some time."

_Forever _went unsaid, but they both heard it. Grounded forever was a highly _likely _outcome for seriously wounded Starfleet officials. Disabled crewmembers were simply not _allowed _on most starships, never mind front-line ships like the _Enterprise_.

"Get to New Vulcan, and process the proper paperwork for a new First Officer. You can permanently promote Sulu if you think he's ready for it, or you can request someone new. I happen to know that Commander Jackson is transferring off the _Northtown _next month."

Jim swallowed and shook his head. _He didn't want to think about this_.

"Let me...let me have a look over my options and I'll...I'll get back to you," he croaked.

Pike stared at him for a good few seconds, before heavily sighing. "Look. I'll give you this," he said. "Your crew is up for a shore leave rotation soon - I'll keep you out of commission on New Vulcan for a few days. A week, tops. Give you...some time."

So Pike knew about them, about their relationship. Knew what Jim was _really _losing - and somehow, it didn't make him feel any better. "Thank you, sir."

"Pike out."

Jim switched off the console and leaned back in his chair. He _did _know. Maybe not the regulations on disabled officers inside and out, but he _did _know that Spock's career on the _Enterprise _was over. Knew that he'd not be coming back.

Then, New Vulcan...New Vulcan would be the end of them. He would never see Spock again. Maybe even never speak to him again - they were done with milk runs now, were mapping uncharted space in the Beta and Gamma Quadrants, were done with diplomatic runs and negotiations. They were often out of range.

He might never seen Spock again.

And what would be his final image? Jim closed his eyes, and the picture that came to mind was simple in its glory - Spock on that unexplored beach, imperial even as the sand tried to bury his boots, standing tall and unyielding and yet...the sun cast through his dark hair, flashing it an inky blue in places, and glancing off that barely-there smile.

Oh God, he would remember that beauty until his dying day.

* * *

Dr. McCoy cursed Jim Kirk as the biobed readouts began to shift. The stupid kid should be here - hell, McCoy had commed him three times, and left four messages in his inbox. There was no way that Jim didn't know. And he'd ignored McCoy in earnest - ignored his warnings to see Spock before now, and now, it seemed, was ignoring his commands to come to Sickbay.

The readouts slid towards their correct places, and McCoy sighed heavily.

He'd been right. Love wasn't going to weather this.

"Spock?" he called gently, leaning over his patient at the first sign of movement beneath those closed lids. "Can you hear me?"

He received a faint wince, before dark eyes - thinned into slits at the bright light - cracked open and a glimmer of life shone through.

"Nurse, dim the lights a little," he called, before offering Spock a reassuring smile. "That better?"

When the Vulcan merely attempted to clear his throat, McCoy spoon-fed him some ice chips before trying again. Faintly, from the main part of Sickbay, he could hear Nurse Chapel attempting (once more) to get hold of the Captain.

"Just a few questions," McCoy said, keeping up the kind-and-patient doctor routine. He _did _have a bedside manner, when it mattered. "Can you tell me your name and rank?"

"Commander Spock, of the _USS Enterprise_."

"And my name and rank?"

"Doctor Leonard McCoy, Chief Medical Officer of the _USS Enterprise_."

"Good," McCoy said, checking his pupils. "Can you remember what happened?"

"I can, doctor," Spock said, and then proved exactly how strong his calm, Vulcan veneer could be. "I would, however, appreciate an explanation as to why I seem to be...missing my legs and part of my left arm."

McCoy nearly cried - or laughed hysterically. He didn't know which. The professional manner in which Spock had asked was _terrifying_, bordering on the insane. How could he just lie there and _ask_, without a hint of emotion, about the reason why he was _missing body parts_?

Instead, McCoy swallowed his _own _emotional response and answered in a manner worthy of a Vulcan. "There was a cave in. You were very badly injured - still are, in fact - and your legs and arm were damaged beyond all possible repair. I had no choice."

There was a pregnant pause, in which Spock closed his eyes again.

"I'm sorry," McCoy breathed at last.

"On the contrary," Spock said, though his own voice had dropped. McCoy didn't know the significance of it. "My trance revealed...considerable damage...and yet I am alive. I have you and your skills alone to thank for that, doctor, and I do thank thee."

McCoy swallowed against the lump in his throat.

"We're going to New Vulcan," he said. "Ten or eleven days before we get there, but that's where we're going. They'll know how to help you...adapt."

Spock said nothing.

"You will adapt," McCoy said, suddenly fiercely. "I know you, _Commander_, and I know just how tough you are. You'll get through this where other people would give up and die - you'll..."

"I will...have to rebuild a life," Spock murmured, eyes still closed, and his voice undeniably wavering now. "I will have to...adapt beyond any adaptation I have yet to make or even consider."

"But you'll do it."

There was another - and even longer - pause, before Spock visibly swallowed.

"Where is Jim?"

There. McCoy's throat constricted painfully, and his stomach threatened to turn. He took a deep, steadying breath and mentally steeled himself for the bullshit he was about to feed Spock - made worse by the fact that he _knew _that Spock would see right through it. He knew it, but he said it anyway because...well, what else was there to say?

"Dealing with the shitstorm that that planet gave us," he said.

Spock's eyebrow twitched. He knew.

"Three people died, Spock, and then...then you're going to have to be transferred off-ship for a while. Jim has a lot to deal with right now," McCoy said.

"I understand."

_Yeah, you do. Just like me, you understand that Jim's avoiding you. And Jesus, I hope you really do understand, because if you don't and you take this the wrong way, I'll kill Jim._

"Alright. Tell you what. I'll give you a light sedative - nothing we can't wake you up from, when Jim gets here - but enough to get you under again. Sleep's the best thing for you right now."

He didn't wait for a response - though there didn't seem to be one coming - and watched the hypo take Spock down again, before turning and stalking out of the ICU, his temper already rising.

Kirk wouldn't know what had hit him.

* * *

The call connected and a face that was somehow familiar and not at the same time appeared before Kirk.

Kirk had never actually met Ambassador Sarek face-to-face. Or, at least, he didn't remember it. Although he knew they'd been on the ship at the same time - hell, he'd been informed it was Sarek that stopped Spock killing him on the bridge - he didn't actually remember him. They'd never been formally introduced, and Jim had had bigger things on his mind than appeasing ambassadors.

After they had returned to Earth, he had (to his knowledge) never crossed paths with Sarek again.

So the face was unfamiliar in that he hadn't ever noticed it before. And yet, it was familiar. There were elements of Spock in that aged face - in the particular angle of the eyebrows, in the pinches about the eyes that spoke of both father and son having emotional reactions at times, and the set jaw that spoke of their mutual stubborn streak.

Spock and Sarek didn't really speak, Jim knew, even since Vulcan's destruction. They had not spoken once between Spock leaving home and Amanda's death, and - as far as Jim knew - hadn't spoken since Spock walked on board the _Enterprise _as Jim's First Officer. Spock very rarely spoke of his father, and never received communications from him.

But Jim knew nothing of Vulcan families. Although it struck him as a cold and distant relationship, he had no frame of reference. Maybe that was normal for Vulcan families; maybe not. In either case, Sarek was Spock's _father_, and he needed to know - especially if they were going to be leaving Spock on New Vulcan.

"Captain Kirk," came the completely flat greeting. "This concerns Spock?"

Straight to the point, then. "Ambassador Sarek. Yes, it does. The _Enterprise _is approaching New Vulcan; we will arrive in approximately eleven days. Spock will be transferring off the ship at that point for medical leave."

An eyebrow rose. Jim wondered whether it was that Spock had picked it up from his father, or whether it was a Vulcan thing. "My son requires medical leave? What has happened?"

Jim swallowed, but forced himself to keep eye contact. "There was a cave in on a scientific mission, and Spock was caught in it. He's been severely wounded and will need further treatment on New Vulcan that we can't provide."

Sarek's expression didn't flicker, and his voice didn't change or falter in the slightest. "Define 'severely.'"

Jim swallowed. "I don't...I don't have a full medical report, but...the ship's surgeon had to amputate both legs, and his right arm, to save his life."

Once again, nothing in Sarek's face or voice altered. "I see. What is his condition at the present time?"

Jim bit his lip. _I don't know; I haven't talked to him _was hardly an adequate response. "If he's lucid enough to give consent, I can have the doctor forward a medical report to you."

"That will suffice."

"I'll contact you again when we arrive at New Vulcan."

"Indeed. I thank thee, Captain. Live long and prosper."

In a second, he was gone, without a flicker of an emotional response that Jim could see. And then emotion _itself _barrelled into Jim's quarters, in the form of Dr. McCoy.

Who was _angry_.


	7. Chapter 7

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Spock was woken quite suddenly, by the gentle sound of the ICU door hissing closed. The moment a shadow fell over him, he knew who it was: Nyota's perfume was one he had been intimately familiar with, after all.

"Lieutenant," he croaked through a dry throat, and was immediately hushed as she reached for the ice chips.

"No ranks here, Spock," she murmured, her own voice straining. When he cracked open his eyes - and she hastily dimmed the lights, as McCoy had done earlier - he saw the reason for it, in the tear-smudges on her cheeks and her bruised eyes. "I wrangled everything out of Chapel. I'll apologise later, but I needed to see you. And...and I think you need someone too."

She was right, and Spock was in no mood to deny it. Emotional control was one thing, but even Vulcans would admit to a certain amount of equilibrium being lost in this situation.

He said nothing, swallowing the last of the ice gratefully, but something must have showed in his face, for she choked and leaned forward, bending over him to gather him into her warm arms like a wounded child. In some maternal instinct, she even established a gentle rocking motion, although she barely moved him and didn't dare lift him due to his still-damaged ribs and spine.

He brought his remaining hand up around her back, quashed the sense of sheer _shock _when his wounded arm tried to do it too, and clung.

"It's alright," she murmured, her voice a very soft cadence in the dim, quiet room. "I'm here. It's alright now; just let go. Let go; I've got you. It'll going to be fine. Let go..."

He didn't, of course. He couldn't give in to those baser urges - to rave and rant and lash out, to express himself in violence that he was no longer even capable of committing. The instincts that years of Surakian teaching could not suppress screamed and battered against the walls of his bruised mind and shattered body, but now - now, at last, and in the worst way - they had nowhere to go. He could not have expressed them if he had wanted to - he was no longer capable of the most basic of movements.

He knew - _knew_, with Vulcan logical certainty, and with scientific observation and understanding - that his life was over.

And yet...yet here, logic had no such bearing. Nyota could change nothing, no more than Spock himself, and perhaps even less. She could do nothing, and her presence could not possibly make it 'alright', as she kept murmuring. And yet...and yet...

Her voice surrounded him as surely as her arms, buried him as surely as her body pressed to his front - tenderly, but firmly enough to be felt despite the drugs and the pain and the shock that Spock knew he was suffering. She felt warmer than she should, and a voice had no temperature, but that, too, kept the air around him warm and comfortable.

Somehow, she eased things when she should not be able to.

Logic had failed him.

"_What do you need_?"

The whisper was as it had been the first time she'd said it - low and urging and desperate, almost. Begging him to let her help. Then, he had not known a response. He hadn't known what to tell her.

Now, he knew.

_Jim. I need Jim._

"I..."

"Tell me," she breathed, her lips next to his ear, her arms sure on his shoulders. He knew that she would obey his every command now, would try everything to get what he needed.

"I..."

"Tell me."

"I...I need time. I need...to meditate and...to rest..."

Her arms tightened one last time, then she drew back, nodding. She had cried, he noted, while she held him, though he hadn't noticed any noise or movement to suggest it. He wondered if it was that he was withdrawing from the world, or whether Nyota was much more adept at hiding her own feelings that he had supposed.

He honestly did not know the answer.

"Alright," she murmured, stroking his hair. "I'll leave you alone for now. I'll tell Christine that you're sleeping. But I'll be back this evening - I don't...you shouldn't be going through this alone."

_She knew_.

The thought struck Spock the moment she was gone. She knew that Jim hadn't been here. If anything, it only confirmed Spock's own knowledge - he hadn't been here at all, even before Spock came out of the trance and the coma. Jim had not been to see him.

He clung to his logic, like a child with a blanket, urging it not to fail him.

When he reached the conclusion, he drew it in and accepted it as fact. It could not be changed, and it could not be helped. What is, is.

He slipped into a meditative trance - but found little comfort.

* * *

Starships lacked a lot of the comforts of planetside bases. The regular complaints involved substandard replicators that only issued dishes that tasted like wet cardboard, the arid air that sucked the moisture out of your lungs, sonic showers, and the occasional engineering screw-up that resulted in zero-gravity at the least convenient times.

But right then, McCoy would have given his medical license for a door that _slammed_.

He barged into Jim's quarters just in time to see Sarek's stony face disappear from the screen on the desk, waited just long enough for Jim to turn a surprised face to him, and decked him.

The thump Jim's back made when he hit the floor was _very _satisfying.

"What the fuck, Bones?" Jim snarled, rubbing his jaw angrily and staggering back to his feet.

"That is well-deserved and you know it!" McCoy snapped. "And believe me, Kirk, if I didn't run the serious risk of beating you bloody, I'd do it again for what you just put me through!"

"You?"

"Yes, me!" McCoy bellowed. "You know what I just had to watch? I'm not a goddamn Vulcan expert like you are, but I know that man well enough to know when he's broken! And I just had to _lie _to him and pretend that you weren't being a fucking _coward_, hiding out here away from him like he's got the goddamn _plague_!"

Jim clenched his jaw and dropped his eyes to the floor.

"You don't get down there _now_, if not _sooner_, then you're going to break his goddamn heart! And don't you think _enough's _been broken?" McCoy continued. He'd had enough, and he was going to express it. If Jim didn't like it, tough: he was going to hear him, if not listen. "He's not fucking _stupid_, Kirk - he _knows _you've not been down there, and damn it, he's going to take a damn good guess at _why_, too! But you know what he's like - he won't blame _you_, will he? He won't put a single piece of the blame on _you_!"

Jim opened his mouth to retort, but McCoy plowed on.

"I have a patient in there who _needs _you, whether either of you will admit it or not! If you have _any _sense of _decency_, you'll get your cowardly ass in my Sickbay and sit with him, because if you don't, I have absolutely _no _doubt that he's not going to get much better than he is _right now_!"

And McCoy didn't have a doubt as to that. The physical injuries could be fixed, the amputations could be adapted to, but Spock's mental stability? Hell, any patient would be in tatters upstairs after such a blow, and without Jim's support, McCoy knew it could - and would - quickly spiral out of his control. Or, worse, Spock's control.

"I _can't_."

Jim's low, broken plea stopped the rant dead in its track, and McCoy gaped at him in sheer disbelief.

"What do you mean, _you can't_?" he snapped.

"I can't do it, Bones," Jim whispered, still staring resolutely at the floor. "I just...I can't. I can't see him like that. He's...he's completely broken and I...I can't see it. I...my last memory of him, he's on that beach. He's...he's _everything_, and I can't...I can't see that so completely _broken_."

McCoy stilled, and his voice was dangerously low when he spoke again. "Don't lie to me, Kirk."

"I'm not _lying _to..."

"If he was _everything_, I wouldn't be able to get you out of my Sickbay for the world. If he was _everything_, you'd be there, supporting him - like you _should _be - and making damn sure your _everything _recovers as much as he's able. He needs you to do that - you and I both know it. So don't you lie to me and tell me shit like that, because this is proving pretty much definitively that it's not true."

Jim choked, startled eyes finally coming up to look McCoy in the face.

"I _thought_," McCoy continued dangerously, "that you'd matured since you started knocking boots with him. Thought you'd grown up a bit; hell, I even thought you'd fallen in love, but..."

"I..."

"_But_, you haven't. You've always been a self-centred little prick, you know that, but this? This is downright selfish. You want to keep your pristine image of him, then you go right ahead. But you keep this up, he'll drop out of your life forever. He's not dead yet, but when that happens, he might as well be dead to you. And hell, if he's as attached to you as I think he is, then it would probably be _kinder _to kill him."

"Bones!"

"Don't you _Bones _me," he snapped. "Get your head out of your ass and get down there, before you lose him permanently. Because you _will_, Jim, mark my words. You keep this up, and sooner or later, you'll lose him."

McCoy's anger was still simmering, low and cold in his stomach, clenching around his guts and spleen - damn, you couldn't usually _feel _a spleen - until he thought he was going to vomit, but Jim's wide-eyed shock pushed him off for a moment. He hardly dared hope, but maybe he had knocked some sense into the kid.

Literally.

"If you've not been to see him before we reach Vulcan, I'm not lying for you any more," he snapped. "I'll tell him what I just told you. And then you can deal with the goddamn fallout."

He stormed out, with the same silly wish for a slamming door, and stalked back to Sickbay like an angry cat.

This, he supposed, was what you got for letting a goddamn _kid _run a starship.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes: **

**

* * *

**

McCoy hadn't appreciated the whole Spock-Uhura dynamic when they'd started out on this mission. An emotionless, cold-hearted man like that could not possibly appreciate the dynamic, wonderful, warm, fiesty woman that was Nyota Uhura. When they'd broken up, he had been ridiculously pleased that the universe could get back to more important things than trying to make a surely doomed relationship work.

Now, he thanked the God his great-grandparents had worshipped that the two of them had remained friends.

If anything, he regretted their break up.

Uhura was effectively doing what _Jim _should have been doing. She defied McCoy's orders regarding rest and peace, and came and went seemingly whenever Spock wanted her to. She was tuned in to his moods, even as Spock tried desperately to retain his control, and only put in an appearance when she knew she'd be wanted or needed.

Which was, distressingly, most of the time.

She sat with him even when she was supposed to be on duty, and McCoy had heard from Sulu that several of the Communications ensigns had drawn lots to cover all of her shifts so she could come and go when she liked. Moreover, Jim had obviously noticed, but hadn't said a word about it.

_Relieved to see someone doing his job for him? _McCoy had wondered bitterly, before pushing the thought away as uncharitable.

Without Uhura, McCoy knew he would have had severe difficulty treating Spock at all. Frequent treatments with the bone regenerator had more-or-less completed the treatment on his spine and ribs, but Spock would only consent to sitting up if Uhura was there to essentially coax - and then bully - him into it.

Technically, Spock could have been moved back into the main portion of Sickbay two days ago, once the dangers of his fractured spine were past, but he point blank refused to be 'on display to be gawked at by your nurses and any curious ensign that happens by.' Even Uhura couldn't persuade him to be moved, and he refused the wheelchair with exactly the same determination.

"It'll do you good to get out of Sickbay for a bit. Get a break from hospital surroundings before you go down to New Vulcan," McCoy overheard Uhura pleading once, but the response was a flat-out no.

With Spock refusing to leave the ICU room that had become his, and Jim refusing to come to the room, McCoy knew now with certainty that they wouldn't see each other for a very long time. He daren't mention it in Sickbay, however, with Uhura in and out all the time, because if anyone was angrier with Jim than McCoy, it was her. (McCoy had learned five new swearwords in Swahili that specifically applied to a human male. And three that were gender- and species-neutral.)

"If it wouldn't get me written up for insubordination, I'd _hit _him!" she raged one evening, over Spock's sedated and sleeping body, as McCoy went through the routine examination of the arm. The infection had lingered for several days after the amputation, but finally seemed to be beaten into submission.

"I _did _hit him," McCoy informed her mildly, and she shot him a wan smile.

"God, it's just...I hope he knows what he's _done_," she murmured, stroking the back of Spock's fingers where they rested on the blanket. She did it a lot, and McCoy knew the significance, but couldn't quite read her reasons for doing it. "You know what Spock thinks?"

"I can take a guess."

"He thinks it's _logical_," she spat. "That because he can't _protect _Jim any more, it's completely _logical _that Jim ditches him. That he's no longer a _worthy _partner - scratch that, I want to hit them both!"

McCoy sighed heavily. He couldn't muster up the energy to rage about it any more. He had seen this coming, and he could see the end coming, and six months down the line, he could see Jim realising exactly what he'd _done_, and he could see the inevitable fallout from that, too.

"He can't stay with the Vulcans," she murmured, a frown developed between her eyebrows. "He just _can't_. He won't get any comfort there - isn't there a way he can go back to Earth instead? Get treatment at Starfleet Medical?"

"Not in the first instance," McCoy said flatly. "Immediate and urgent treatment, you send them right back to their own species. He'll need prosthetics, physio, mental health therapy...none of that do we - or StarMed - know better than the Vulcans do. It's regulation. Once he's stabilised, he can request a transfer - if he's still part of Starfleet."

Uhura shot him a look. "What do you mean 'if'?"

McCoy shrugged. "He's a disabled officer. He can't possibly serve on a constitution-class starship again. And I've seen his service record - that's all he was ever on. He might be the Science Officer, but every single posting has been to a front-line exploratory ship. The _York_, the _Santa Maria_, the _Potemkin_. I have no idea whether he'll want to return to duty if the most he can get is a research plant in the middle of Federation space."

Judging by the look on Uhura's face, she didn't have any better idea than McCoy.

"And if he resigns, he'll have to seek treatment privately like every other citizen. Which probably means staying on Vulcan; private Earth clinics won't have the necessary knowledge of Vulcan anatomy to help him."

"So either way, he'll be stuck."

"Yeah. Yeah."

Then, for the first time, McCoy saw Lieutenant Uhura cry.

* * *

Vulcans very rarely said goodbye, or any parting farewell - it was not a logical sentiment unless it was known that you were not going to see the other again in your lifetime. Then, faced with permanent separation, Vulcans often spared the minor sentiment for their close relatives and spouses - goodbye was an acceptable thing to utter when faced with the deaths of bondmates, parents, siblings and children.

In this instance, Spock found himself saying goodbye not to someone else's life, but to his own.

He was attuned enough to the constant tremor of the ship's engines to know when she turned into an orbital path around New Vulcan, and much of the engines were rendered inactive. He knew enough to know that they had reached his people, and that he had very little time left aboard the _Enterprise_, much less any other ship.

He knew that he would likely never return to active duty anywhere in the Federation.

And so he found himself saying goodbye to a life.

Illogical as it was, Starfleet had been an ambition of his since he was a small child. His grandfather - Amanda's father - had been an officer, and while Spock had never actually met the man, there had been pictures in their home in Shi'Kahr of a tall man in command gold with Amanda's - and Spock's - dark eyes.

He never mentioned his wanderlust, or his curiosity in the worlds beyond Vulcan's pink-tinted skies, except when he was very small (and then in secret) to his mother. She had known, and watched it in him, and when he had applied to Starfleet, he told her where he hadn't told his father. His father had found out in his hearing for the VSA - and had reacted unpleasantly.

"He'll come around," his mother had promised him at the shuttleport, and then he had left Vulcan - more or less forever. He had returned only once, in time to see his mother killed, and then there had been no Vulcan to return to.

His father had not 'come around.'

And yet, in the face of everything Starfleet had to offer him, his father's disapproval had seemed a small and irrelevant thing. Nyota and Jim both, in their turn, had expressed disgust at the idea that Sarek and Spock rarely spoke because of Spock's career choice, but it truly had not bothered Spock. He had the universe to see, new worlds to touch, new things to experience.

There would be time. Even Vulcans did not stay young and able forever.

This, however, was beyond what he had imagined. His mother had once asked whether it would take him being 'sent home in a box' for the two of them to put their argument aside, and Spock almost wished - no, he _did _wish - that that was the outcome. It would be preferable to this. A crippled life, unable to perform the most basic of tasks that Vulcan and Human infants alike had perfected by their third or fourth year of age. A life wholly dependent on machinery and assistance. A life planetside, permanently, for the next hundred and fifty years or so of his long, Vulcan life.

To return to his father, wounded beyond all repair, and yet pulled back from a death that would have been a mercy...

Death would have been merciful. There was nothing now that he could contribute. He could not protect his partner, who had - quite logically - terminated their affair. He could not serve elsewhere in Starfleet in the capacity that his mind demanded. His intellect, undamaged, would not be useful as his body prevented him from assisting in important space exploration and research. There were plenty able, willing and trained to perform static research; there were fewer skilled researchers willing to undertake frontline exploration. He could not contribute to New Vulcan - as the disabled, he would only drain their resources, and his intellect could be matched by other Vulcans. His prior pride - he had to admit it - had been in assisting his mother, on a world that was harsh to her, and now that role was gone.

He was useless.

He heard McCoy's distinctive tread approaching the door to the ICU, and closed his eyes in preparation. He would be sedated, he knew, and resettled in the Vulcan facility that his father had recommended. When he woke, it would be to New Vulcan, and healers that he did not know, and the _Enterprise _and everyone aboard it would be gone.

"It's time."


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes: Yes, I changed the story name. Also, this story ends here. Thanks for all the wonderful reactionary reviews, and I hope to see you all again soon for the next installment!**

**

* * *

**

_Please, contact me. Keep me up to date._

_Jim._

It was, quite possibly, the longest letter (email) that Jim had ever written. He had never been much one for them, but this called for it. If he couldn't give Spock a goodbye, he was going to do at least this. McCoy hadn't been completely off the mark. Jim wasn't heartless, just spineless, and he mustered enough courage to at least do this.

But that was all he could do.

He sent the email to Spock's account, sent up a quick prayer to a god that he didn't believe in, and logged out.

And off.

He switched off the screen, then the entire console. He set his communicator to activate only in case of emergency calls, locked the doors to his quarters so that only McCoy could override them, and curled up in the middle of his bunk.

These had never been Spock's quarters - they hadn't been together long enough for that - but there was still evidence of him in the room. One of his blue science tunics hung in the midst of Jim's closet, melding with all the gold and green. In the out-of-sight bathroom, he had a toothbrush and a razor. Jim was fairly sure that he had a bottle of Vulcan incense around somewhere, from the odd time that he had wanted to be near even when Spock had to meditate.

But most of all, Spock's smell lingered in the pillows.

It brought a surge of emotion, and Jim closed his eyes and rode it out.

_Anger_. Overwhelming, raging _anger_, burning through his veins and boiling his blood, simmering in his brain like viscous poison. Anger at himself, for being such a coward; at McCoy, simultaneously for not understanding and for not pushing _hard _enough, and Jim already knew how unfair that was; at that planet, for its seismic issues and its arrogance in harming his First Officer; hell, even at _Spock_, for not getting out there fast enough, for not coming to Jim (and Jim hated himself for not knowing if that were even possible) and forcing him to acknowledge this...

Followed promptly by _grief_ - the loss, the yawning loss in front of him choked his lungs and tore everything out between his balls and his brain, leaving only an empty hole that he wanted to vomit up but couldn't for his new lack of a stomach, and then there was the

_Fear_. That was an odd one, the fear. It was the fear that kept him grounded and stuck here - and the fear of what, exactly, he didn't know. What was he afraid of, exactly? It was the one thing Jim couldn't pin down about this whole sorry situation, and yet it coursed through him like an eel, slimy and alive, as sure as the anger and the grief that shook him like a birch leaf in a New England winter.

And none of it measured up to the...

Well, the _despair_. Because Jim knew - knew as sure as he knew his own name - that there was nothing he could do now. He had rejected the offer of leave on Vulcan, and they would be moving on in three days, to rendezvous at Starbase Five and pick up two new science officers and Commander Leehy, soon to be Jim's new First Officer.

There was nothing Jim could do now.

He knew what McCoy - hell, what everyone - had expected, but he just couldn't step down. Maybe that was the fear. The fear of...what? Returning to his roots? Losing that sense of purpose and dignity and _right _that this job gave him? Perhaps - but Jim wasn't stupid, and he knew, somehow, that that wasn't quite the answer.

Whatever it was, the fear and the despair struck him immobile, even as the anger and the grief and the guilt - yes, guilt, for feeling any of this in the first place - tore through him and left him bereft and empty. Bereft and empty - that would be his life now.

Spock would be gone.

No more chess games in either man's quarters, descending into kissing matches and Jim's hands sliding up under that enticingly tight shirt; no more eyebrows on the bridge challenging Jim's intellect, superiority, authority, or libido; no more half-smiles, half-frowns, or half-expressions that had been so easy to read once you learned the language; no more hitching, gasping little sighs in the darkness of Jim's rooms as he ripped out all of that control and cradled what was left in his arms; no more middle-of-the-night awakenings when Spock tried to leave to meditate or work, nor the two-in-the-morning 'persuasions' to get him to stay; no more arguments in the mess over the little things, and standing shoulder-to-shoulder against the universe for the big things; no more foot massages while they said nothing all; no more temptations to stop the turbolift and be late for shift; no more...

No present, and no future. There was nothing left, but a blue tunic in the closet, products in the bathroom, some hidden incense, and a smell on the pillow that would soon long be gone and (worse still) forgotten.

Hell.

He'd probably never enter the First Officer's quarters again.

Jim turned his face into the pillow, breathed in the lingering scent - already so faint that he strained to catch it - drew up his shoulders until they could have blocked his ears, and let the first of the tears fall.

* * *

Spock woke already knowing where he was.

Vulcan hospitals did not smell so sterile as Human ones - they smelled faintly of warmth and dry sand, of bright light and humming telepathy. They _did _hum, to a telepath, because of the lack of control hospital patients often had with regards to their minds. He could feel, keenly as hearing a scream, the solemnity in the air, the peace, and the lack of emotion.

There were no peaches. McCoy was gone.

He opened his eyes to the pale blues and whites of a private room. The large window was open, allowing air from (judging by the sounds of birds - alien things to Vulcan as it had been) the early afternoon to ghost into the room, in some meagre attempt at comfort. It would be the only comfort he received here, he knew.

He took a look around, not bothering to attempt to sit or rise from the bed. He had barely had time to get used to the feel of weightless that plagued him, and the haunting sight of the sheets dropping away to nothingness where his legs had been. And the lost hand - the _blindness _that tinged his telepathy, the sense that it would slip from his reach and his world would be cut off and silenced _forever_...

He drew his mind away from the idea, and back to the room.

Whether the crew had accompanied him or not (and having been sedated, he would not know) they had sent gifts. One corner of the room was dedicated to them - parcels and cards and flowers that would soon wilt and die in New Vulcan's heat. Closer, on the bedside table, lay his personal datapadd and two spares from the _Enterprise_ - and, to his surprise, a more battered padd that he recognised as belonging to McCoy.

Unable to help himself, he reached for it, and the short message jumped at him - the human that had written it evident in every word.

_Spock,_

_I want you to keep me informed on how you're doing - and how you're really doing, none of this 'adequate' and 'logic' nonsense you bandy about in my medical bay. This padd has a direct link to my console should you want to talk, and if not, I've programmed in all my personal padds into the contacts information._

_Keep me updated, and look after yourself. Even if Jim's a complete moron, I'm not. You're my patient and my friend, and I'll be damned if you think I'm just going to forget about that._

_Leonard._

Spock had never cried. He was not sure - though he had never checked - whether it was even possible for him to cry.

But he certainly felt the - illogical, inexplicable, _human _- urge to do so.

* * *

**END PART ONE**

_What are the odds, what are the odds,_  
_That this ends and we don't meet again?_

Carbon Leaf, _Changeless._


End file.
